Can Dogs Play a Role in Mystery Novels?

If you love dogs as I do, you will enjoy writing about them in your mystery novels. Dogs can play a role in most mysteries. Sometimes they can add a touch of humor or romance or heroism. I’ve written dogs into two of my novels. In my latest novel, Lethal Lesson, I have a lovable St. Bernard named Falstaff that adores the ladies in the story. In Murder Down Under I wrote in Lizzie, a Border Collie that manages to work hundreds of sheep on a huge, Outback sheep station in Australia and fall in love with Lysi Weston, my main character. In the novel on which I’m currently working, set in San Francisco, my canine character is Artemis, a German shepherd that considers herself a lap dog. Unlike Artemis the huntress after whom she’s named, my dog character has never hunted anything except her food dish. Add a dog to your mystery novel and see how much it will enhance your story.

My brother, Billy and I were brought up with dogs. While I love dogs in general, I really adore German shepherds. Billy sent me this image that does more to describe these lovable animals than any words could express.

I have this spring published the first in my series of suspense novels for dog lovers. It is called, Fashion Goes to the Dogs. As an author who has shown my Samoyed dogs for more than forty years, I wouldn’t think of doing a mystery without them.